


doppelgänger

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles (Homestuck), Gen, Human Vriska Serket, POV Vriska Serket, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27900151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: just thinking about valley girl vriska headcanons and how different they are from the vriska that exists rent free in my head
Kudos: 7





	doppelgänger

Tall, blonde, skinny - and whiter than white, than the foam on her dry nonfat cappuccinos. Limbs intact. Both eyes open, one pupil each. I hate her.

The other-me lounges by the poolside, blonde hair spilling over slender shoulders like corn fields under bluest April skies. I can see pieces of myself in her face, the way it would look in shards of broken glass - the unwrinkled slope of her forehead, the shape of her marionette nose, the curve of her mouth - fuck, we almost have the same bottom lip, hers slightly poutier than mine. 

But it's all wrong. I touch my horns, the jagged chitin; my stomach churns at the sight of her smooth human scalp. Myself but not myself. A self of mine. _I hate her._

She's drinking a fruity cocktail, some shiny blue like vodka shaken with bleach. The lime floats in a fetal position. I stand in the shade of the oak trees, awash in her strange memories, swirling inside me and catching in my throat like hair down a shower drain.

I know the white-shuttered house where she grew up, with the ferns around the porch and the grey Volvo in the cluttered garage, filled with the glistening architecture of cellar spiders. I suddenly understand what _mother_ is, what ours was not.

Her hair glows under the dream bubble stars like nuclear waste. Everything is a memory, ours or someone else's. Her small, boring life flutters under my eyelids, the summers spent pushing other children under the crisp chlorinated water and texting on her flipphone with the beaded charms whipping her wrist.

She had a part-time job at a yogurt shop where she stole the tips for herself. She keeps a comb just for her eyebrows. _She went to therapy._ Her best friends call her a bitch but not a murderer. I feel her first death between my ribs, when she fell from a cliff in our Land onto a pillar of sea-whetted rock. They... _mourned_ her, in the game.

I wonder if she has any scars at all, but I've had enough of other-me's pathetic mistakes.

I approach her slowly from behind. Once I'm close enough to taste her sunscreen and citrus-scented moisturizer, I take the knife from my belt and plunge it into the soft flesh of her throat. Blood gurgles out in a small fountain like the ones by the locker room where she put her mouth on the spout - disgusting, she truly deserves this. She makes a keening noise and claws at the knife with her manicured nails. Her eyes - bright with a half remembered life - meet mine - white with death.

In those shiny wet slugs slithering around her skull, I see my coarse black hair, unbrushed down to my boyish waist. I see my sharp teeth and strong hands and the blue-mottled socket where there was an eye before. I pluck one of those slugs of hers out, mashing it between my thumb and forefinger.

She stumbles into the pool, and I follow her, fully clothed. My heavy boots and denim trousers barely weigh me down; I don't even hear her screaming. Her iron-salty blood is redder than anything I've ever seen come out of an animal.

She couldn't be me, not this thrashing pale body. This creature, violently feminine, with blood as sweet as crushed berries. She's nothing like me, as I am nothing to her.

The edges of this memory start to dissipate like candlesmoke as the wick burns low. Soon she will be forgotten by the universe, by me - every reflection in the broken glass, crushed into sand.

On the other side, stark against the bubble's shimmering membrane, other-me, realer-than-me smiles. Her hair shines with blood like a mucus-slick grub; her eyes quiver like boiled eggs in cold water, soft and moist. From her spine, a pair of gossamer wings splits her silhouette.

I let her go. In all my dreams, I end up alone and covered in blood.


End file.
